


Three Men Who Don't Stay Dead

by Peredur



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amy isn't really in this much, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Jack Harkness Flirts, M/M, Multi, Ninth Doctor and Jack Harkness established relationship, POC Jack Harkness, Polyamory, Rose was sent home, Slow Burn Romance, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 03:57:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7742440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peredur/pseuds/Peredur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I think Rory should be with Nine and Jack. So I started writing him a plot for that.</p><p>So Rory dies and wakes up in an unfamiliar TARDIS. This is what happened next....</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Rory Dies... Again

“No, Rory, don't!” was the last thing she said to him. Seconds later, he was dead.

About an hour later, he woke up.   
“Amy?” he asked hopefully as he groggily came to. He quickly and automatically checked his body for any obvious injuries but found only minor cuts and bruises. He'd been.. knocked out? He tried to work out how and when but his head hurt and his vision wouldn't focus. “Amy?!” he asked again, louder this time. There was no answer, no Amy. There was, at least, the familiar wheeze and hum of the TARDIS and a gentle warm breeze coming from somewhere near him – the TARDIS was very thoughtful and seemed to want to comfort him. He let himself be comforted and drifted back into sleep.

He awoke to the sounds of unfamiliar voices. Not the expected voices of his family, his Amy, his Doctor, his River. Different voices. Male voices. One clearly Northern, another a jaunty American. Who were they and how did they get in?  
Rory sat bolt upright. Fearing danger, he was suddenly alert. “Doctor?!” he called urgently and the voices suddenly stopped.  
The time between his call and the arrival of the two men must have been mere seconds but to Rory it was a terrifying stretch of time in which to mounting panic he realised this TARDIS was not the one he called home.  
There were battered seats and something he swore must be a tree somehow growing through the ship. The walls were a bronze-y gold leading to a roof that domed over a central column of green-blue light. The floor beneath him was a thick mesh. He knew for sure he was in the TARDIS and that he'd seen this room before but he had no time to remember when before...  
The men reached him and the one wearing a battered leather jacket spoke to him.  
“You called?” he said, beaming to himself. Without waiting for Rory to reply, he continued, “You called Doctor and here I am.”  
“You're not the Doctor...” Rory began to reply, mentally noting that this “Doctor” was the owner of the Northern accent, “Oh shit, wait. Time travel. Gotta sync our diaries.”  
The Doctor didn't seem to understand so Rory pulled out a TARDIS blue diary from his pocket. “Right..” he sighed, “Where are we up to?” He glanced at the Doctor. “Big ears, no hair... ah we're VERY early in your timestream no wonder you don't know who I am... Have you met River yet?”  
The Doctor looked confused.  
“Ah,” said Rory, “You clearly haven't so, erm, let's see...”  
“Sorry to interrupt,” said the Doctor who did not appear sorry at all, “But who the hell are you?”  
“I'm... a friend,” Rory said carefully, “You meet me in the future. Either that or this is a dream I'm having or perhaps I'm dead again... Oh fuck, I shouldn't have said that.. Spoilers.”  
Rory returned to leafing through his diary, trying to get a handle on where and when he was. He finally truly understood River's panic about one day meeting a Doctor who had never seen here before.. and while his thoughts wandered for one brief second to his daughter, the American man lunged forwards and grabbed the diary from his hands.  
Before Rory's mind could even register what had happened, the American had tossed the diary to the Doctor and the Doctor had promptly flicked through it. By the time Rory managed to say “Stop, don't!”, the Doctor had read the whole thing.

“Ah.” said the Doctor, “Right.” He passed the book over to the American who also thumbed through it.  
“Oh” said the American, “I see”  
Rory snatched the diary back and held it to his chest. “You aren't allowed to read that,” he said to no one in particular. Nothing even remotely like this had happened in his dreams of meeting one of the earlier Doctors. This hadn't even happened in any of River's informal “Time Travel and Foreknowledge Etiquette” classes. He was supposed to calmly take control and instruct the Doctor to return time to his correct time.. not let the Doctor gain the upper hand. And yet here he was, not at all in control and possibly in the process of entirely rewriting his own timeline (again!) and being written out of history (again!) because he let the Doctor get hold of foreknowledge...  
Rory felt a hand on his shoulder. The Doctor's hand. He looked up into those sad blue eyes.  
“Rory,” said the Doctor quietly but purposefully, “I am so sorry, Rory but I have to tell you: you're dead.”


	2. Dead

He was dead. Rory accepted this knowledge calmly. He'd died before and Amy had always fixed it. He died and then she brought him back and everything carried on more or less as if nothing untoward had happened. Dying was just something that happened to Rory and not really something he felt a need to get upset about.  
“Oh great,” he said, “I'm dead”  
The Doctor had clearly not been expecting this reaction. “You're DEAD,” he repeated, as if hoping the emphasis would prompt a more understandable reaction. “You died. You're dead”  
“Yeah, I got that, thanks,” said Rory dryly.  
“Jack,” said the Doctor as he turned to the American, “He's dead! He's human and dead and just standing there talking to us!”  
Rory could've sworn that the Doctor was smiling as he said that. His eyes gleamed with.. Joy? Excitement? He was babbling to the American, to “Jack” something about how Rory was definitely human and definitely dead.  
Rory wasn't listening. He was waiting for Amy to save him. He wasn't worried, he knew she'd come for him. Amy always did.  
“You're gonna want to sit down,” Jack said, breaking Rory out of his thoughts of Amy. Jack gestured towards the battered seats.  
Rory sat. Jack sat down next to him. Jack smiled at Rory before taking a deep breath. “So, you're dead, right?” he said to Rory, “And right now that seems okay because you're used to dying. Happens to you all the time?”  
Rory looked round at the man beside him. He began to ask a question but Jack cut him off.  
“I know because it happens to me. I die and I'm dead and then I'm not. But you can't have this problem for the same reason I do so... how did it happen?”  
Rory shrugged. “I die and then Amy rescues me. Or the Doctor does. Then I'm not dead any more. That's all there is to it.”  
“But it's not,” interjected the Doctor.  
“Not what?” asked Rory.  
“It's not all there is to it at all, Rory Williams, not in the slightest,” said the Doctor.


	3. Chapter Three: Wait, what?!

"Rory, you died when you were a baby"

The Doctor's words made no sense to Rory so he pretended not to hear him.

"You died then and you've been dying over and over ever since," the Doctor continued, "From your perspective, nothing much happens, Most of the times you've died you haven't even noticed and you've just got on with your life. But from the BIGGER perspective, Rory, from an all-of-time-space perspective, well, it's a lot more complicated than that! Because from a cosmic perspective, you see, you aren't the same Rory as the Rory who died an hour ago. You're a duplicate and you're dead."

Whatever response the Doctor was expecting from Rory wasn't happening. Dead, duplicated, cloned, what did that matter to someone who'd spent thousands of years as a plastic Roman? Nothing mattered except staying alive - well, dead or whatever, just staying put until Amy came to find him.  
He knew she would, she always did.

Jack put his brown hand gently on Rory's denim-covered knee and then began to speak to him gently. "I know this is hard to understand," he began, "But please listen. Listen to the Doctor, Rory. He's not got the best bedside manner but he does try."  
Rory looked at the Doctor, this Doctor who looked older than the Doctor he knew back home but whose blue eyes seemed so very youthful in comparison.  
"Just take me back to wherever I cam from, please," he said wearily. His headache hadn't gotten any better and nothing anyone said made much sense. "I just want to go home."

The Doctor looked at Jack. His face suddenly anxious and no longer excited. He bit his lip and then he sat down on the other side of Rory. He looked at the floor and said, "I can't do that, Rory."

"Why not?!"

"Because the other Rory won't want to see you. Because I don't want to harm you or him or his wife. Because one Rory Williams per parallel universe is more than enough." The Doctor sighed. "I'm very sorry Rory but you can't ever go back,"

"Wait, what?! What do you mean "his wife"?" Rory said angrily, "There's only one me for Amy and I'm him!"

"There's only one Rory for Amy and he's not you," the Doctor said bluntly, "I really am sorry, Rory, but she's still got her husband. She has the alive one. You're dead. He's fine. She's happy, the other Doctor is happy, the other you is happy... and you're dead and you're here. She's not coming for you - from her perspective she's already saved you."

No longer able to care that this was the wrong Tardis, Rory got up and ran. Tears flowed down his face and sobs threatened to choke his throat and he ran and ran.


End file.
